Roche vows to fight to reclaim lost time

Nicolas Roche has vowed to fight to reclaim lost time in the Paris-Nice race, with the Irishman dropping 12 seconds yesterday in the prologue time trial in Houilles.

He finished 79th in the 2.9km test, although his relatively small deficit to winner Damien Gaudin (Team Europcar) is not insurmountable in the eight-day race. He will be more concerned about dropping seconds to the other general classification riders. The WorldTour race continues today with a 195km race from Saint-Germain-en-Laye to Nemours.

Irish road race champion Matt Brammeier finished 51st overall in the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen race in Belgium. He came down in a crash on Saturday's second day of racing but fortunately was not badly hurt.